Ever since the Columbine High School mass shooting in 1999, mass shootings have become so commonplace that Americans have become desensitized to the media coverage of such shootings. According to the data analysis of shootings from 1982 to 2011 performed by the Harvard School of Public Health, mass shootings occurred every 200 days on average. See Amy Cohen, Deborah Azrael, & Matthew Miller, Rate of Mass Shootings Has Tripled Since 2011, Harvard Research Shows, Mother Jones (Aug. 1, 2016). Most recently in 2011, the frequency of mass shootings tripled to every 64 days on average. Id.
Despite shootings to date, such as the Stockton schoolyard in the West to Virginia Tech in the East and such as Sandy Hook Elementary in the North to the Dallas police shooting in the South, Congress has yet to pass any meaningful gun control legislation. But gun control legislation is only half of the solution. Many anti-gun-violence technologists envision a safer world through the increased sale and use of smart guns, which might prevent or at least reduce gun misuse, accidental shootings, gun thefts, use of the weapon against its owner, and self-harm.